It's May, the end of May. The grass is green and bushy, coming along now. All the plants in the garden are making themselves known. Greening, growing.

Life rolls along. I and Adam go to our respective works, do our jobs. Come home. Make food. And all of the little things that fill up a day. (Texting, paletting, peeing, singing, walking, dish-doing... et cetera.)

Last post, I wrote about my new job and some of the resistance roadblocks I've felt. Well, those voices of resistance are slowly creeping back into the corners, but they are still present. But as I do a little more each day, I get more confident.

There are still times, though, when I take a big step out of my comfort zone, and then I feel nervous. Like last week - the choir I direct held a Spring Concert/Singalong for the other clients in the Centre and boy, was I nervous! For weeks leading up to it. There is nothing like pushing the boundaries of what you know, and going into the territory of "who the heck knows how this will go!", to make me feel... all the feelings. I was nervous that I'd f*ck it all up, that all my coworkers would laugh at me or talk about me behind my back, that the choir themselves would forget all the songs we've been learning, or that some other Potential Complete Failure would come to pass. Or all of those things at once! Whenever I thought about May 26 (the chosen date) those fears would flash across my brain.

BUT deep breaths and mantras help. Seriously! Mantras like "Just do your best, Noble. That's all you can do." Or "Just take things one minute at a time." I say them to myself in my head. Whenever needed.

And the concert/singalong went great. We sang, people listened, they sang along, they clapped. We all felt good about what we had done, what we had accomplished on this mission into the territory of "who the heck knows how this will go!". And we celebrated.

***

My creative joys right now:

comics! I rediscovered Lucy Knisley and have fallen in love with her style and stories. Her career and reflection of how she's gotten to where she is are interesting/inspiring too.
writing! I had the chance to talk one-on-one with Esme Waijun Wang (I won a contest she did on Instagram, so that was rad) about how I want to write a novel. (YUP - yikes - what?! NBD.) She recommended a course she made called Where's the Electricity? to get started. I bought it and we'll see what happens. I'm curious to see what passions/obsessions emerge as mine.
Photo books - I want to make one for each year of my life since 2007, which is when I stopped printing photos and putting them in albums or scrapbooks, and started collecting digital data (without really knowing that that's what I was doing). I'm sick of all those memories being stuck behind a screen. I want them on paper, something I can touch and look through with no electrical cord needed.
(still) my 100 Day Project - I'm making colour palettes and posting them to my Instagram. See them all here. Example palette at top of post.

Where's life taking you lately? I'd love to hear.

My job since January 2017 is a Job Developer/Trainer for adults with intellectual disabilities.

So often I feel like: "I don't know what I'm doing."

It's really really easy to let that thought crystallize into a roadblock, and then to stop doing whatever I'm doing. So much of what I'm doing since I have started this job in January is new to me, and I often feel like I'm making it up as I go.

Teach a course on pre-employment skills? Well, I have piles of binders and the directive to make a course out of it. But I've never done that before.

Go around to employers in our community and build relationships with them? Well, I have ideas and a decent ability to make conversation, as well as some experience working with people with disabilities to back me up. But again, I've never done that before.

Are these things I have enough to get started? My thought-turned-roadblock says NO. But the part of me that knows I gotta get shit done because this is my job now, says "Whether they are or they aren't, it doesn't matter. You gotta do it anyway."

Then I procrastinate.

Then I get panicky thinking of my deadline so I get my shit together. I tidy up my workspace and clear the clutter. I get down to work.

Then I get interrupted. It's breaktime or it's lunchtime, or the phone rings, or a co-worker pops in my door. Or I get a text. Or ... whatever. Then the cycle repeats.

I tend to think of myself as a confident person so it's always strange and disorienting to run into the no-confidence wall. Into the starting-again-at-a-new-thing wall.

But such is life, isn't it? I forget that fact, constantly. But such is life.

So I shut my door at work. I say "fuck it" and I start. I type a tentative lesson plan. I teach the first class. I show up to the job where I'm coaching someone. I give it a shot. I give it a shot.

In other news... life is good. I have realized I actually love my job. Even though it's new to me. Even though it's a turn off the path from what I was doing before. Even though it's not perfect and it's a little chaotic, and on some days, it's a lot draining.

And Adam and I have decided to try for a little one! This is mainly private news, but I feel like sharing here because, well, it's my blog, my life. I'm excited about the idea that any month now I could see those two pink lines on the stick, then get to experience the growing of my belly, the stirring of life.

My creative joys right now: